Isaac Hertz's shimmering debut film, LIFE IS STRANGE, is a kaleidoscopic story of an illustrious group of survivors who look back on their vibrant Jewish family lives before the Holocaust -- including Shimon Peres (President of the State of Israel and Nobel Laureate), Uri Orlev (Hans Christian Andersen Award winner for Children's Literature), Peter Loewenberg (Professor Emeritus, UCLA), Robert Aumann (Nobel Prize, Economics), Philanthropists, Kurt and Edith Rothschild, Peter Marcuse (Professor of Urban Planning, Columbia University), Walter Cohn (Nobel Prize, Chemistry) and others. A compilation of intimate archival footage, this is an affecting meditation on those displaced as children and what remains of their childhood in old age.

"Isaac Hertz is to be congratulated "A poignant piece ....a way of life lost forever to the Nazi barbarism."Peter Loewenberg Dean Emeritus ,UCLA

"Triumphs and joys register."Los Angeles Times

Director's Statment

When I was 17 and struggling with school, I started taking trips on weekends to
see a cousin of mine. He was a quiet man in his 80's whose curiosity and humor
intrigued me. There wasn't much basis for our relationship. He was from Poland and I
was from Miami. He spoke Yiddish and Hebrew. I spoke English and broken Hebrew.
But we connected, and he affected me in a quiet and subtle way. We conversed about
everything despite our different languages: politics, school, family. And it started to
dawn on me that I may have more in common with this old man than I did with anyone
else. He was more broadminded than anyone I knew. He never made judgments. He
listened. We trusted each other.

I was drawn to this old man, to his ability to laugh at himself, his refusal to be
serious the way other people I knew were serious, and his lively skepticism. It was a few
years before I connected my attraction to him with an interest in his background. Later,
getting to know my grandmother, I recognized in her a serenity that he had. I realized
there was a culture that developed people like him. I would spend hours talking to my
grandmother about the various members of her family and the environment she was
raised in, mainly the unusual people that frequented her home. I felt as if there was a
great fissure that separated us from the past.

Like a lot of grandchildren of survivors I wonder more about the communities that
no longer exist than I think about the war itself. In what kind of place would I have been
raised, had it not been for the war? Who would be my friends, my neighbors, my
community? Was there a measure of beauty that was lost with the war? These were the
kinds of questions I was thinking about when I first had the idea of conducting the
interviews that became the substance of this film. When I mentioned the idea to my
friends I was surprised and pleased that they immediately embraced it. They all shared
the same curiosity that animates this film.

-- Isaac Hertz

About the Production

LIFE IS STRANGE started as an attempt by a couple of friends to trace their
family history. Isaac Hertz and Sammy Grundwerg did not set out to make a
documentary. They just wanted to learn something about their past. They both felt that
despite the deluge of material that has been produced about the Holocaust, there is
little available to define the Jewish culture that disappeared during the war.

The filmmakers have always found themselves attracted to survivors they met,
not for the scars they carried, but for their personalities that were unlike any others they
ever met. They were sure that it had to do with the pre-war culture that today is only
accessible through survivors of that period. So Hertz and Grundwerg decided to start
talking to survivors on camera about their youth to try and capture some of its unique
qualities.

They conducted 25 interviews over the course of two years with people around
the world. Some were close friends of the filmmakers and some were famous people
they read about. All shared unique childhood experiences and all offered a precious
connection to the past.

Aided with independent camera work, newsreels, and original home movies, the
movie is a tapestry of intimate conversations and rare footage. It takes us into the heart
of pre-war Yiddish culture but it also portrays the very universal experience of carefree
childhood. As Uri Orlev, a children's book author and a Holocaust survivor, relates,
"Children remember differently than adults do."

LIFE IS STRANGE also documents the struggle that survivors experience to
retain their memory and find some connection to an intangible past. It portrays the way
personal lives intersect within great historical transformations, and it connects a great
political upheaval with the truths revealed only in childhood memory.

Interviews (In Order of Appearance)

Shimon Peres

President of the State of Israel, and the world's oldest de jure
head of state, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. He
is originally from Wisznievo, Belarus.

Uri Orlev

Award-winning Israeli children's author, recipient of the Hans
Christian Andersen Award for children's literature, Uri
has published more than 30 books, which are frequently
biographical. He is originally from Warsaw, Poland.

Peter Loewenberg

Professor emeritus at the University of California Los
Angeles. He teaches European cultural and intellectual
history, integrating the identities of an historian and political
psychologist with the clinical practice of psychoanalysis. He
is a Dean and Chairman of the Education Committee and
Director of the Training School, Southern California
Psychoanalytic Institute. He is originally from Hamburg, Germany.

Robert Aumann

Professor at the Center for the Study of Rationality in the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. He received the
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2005 for his work on
conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis. He is
originally from Frankfurt, Germany.

Kurt & Edith Rothschild

President of Merkaz Olami--World Mizrachi, Kurt and his wife
Edith are known worldwide for their philanthropy and
contributions to Jewish education. Kurt is originally from
Cologne, Germany, and Edith from Mannheim, Germany.

Walter Kohn

Professor of Theoretical Chemistry at the University of
California Santa Barbara, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Chemistry on October 13, 1998 for his development of the
density-functional theory. He has students in virtually every
part of the world. He is originally from Vienna, Austria.

Rabbi Isidore Greengrass

Rabbi in New London, Connecticut where he served
Congregation Beth El for over 50 years, Rabbi Greengrass
was a major leader in organizing the Jewish survivors of the
Holocaust in Regensburg, Germany, shortly after his
liberation by the American Third Army. Rabbi Greengrass
passed away on August 12, 2009, in Tampa, Florida at the
age of 96. He was originally from Lomza, Poland.

Esther Zaks

Daughter of the legendary Dean of the Slobodka Talmudic
Academy, Esther has spent her life furthering her father's
dream of re-establishing the famed Yeshiva in Israel after its
devastation during the Second World War. She is originally
from Slobodka, Lithuania.

Peter Marcuse

Professor of Urban Planning at Columbia University. Peter is
the son of Herbert Marcuse, the political philosopher
celebrated as the "Father of the New Left." Peter is originally
from Berlin, Germany.

Ruth Orenstein & Yocheved Friedenson

They are sisters who reside in New York City. Close family
friends of the filmmakers, they have played important roles in
the rejuvenation of Jewish life in America after the Holocaust.
They are originally from Krakow, Poland.

Devorah Spira

A supervisor in the Department of Social Services of New
York City for many years, and the founder of a charity
organization in Brooklyn, New York. She is the daughter of a
great Chasidic Rabbi, and a repository of a wealth of
information about the Chasidic dynasties of Poland before
the Second World War. She is originally from Krakow, Poland.

Mara Vishniac Kohn

She has spent her life teaching and working with children
and adolescents, particularly those with learning or
educational disabilities. Daughter of the famed photographer
Roman Vishniac, Mara is fully involved in her father's estate,
as well as in the current research and upcoming
retrospective of Vishniac's work at the International Center of
Photography in New York. She is originally from Berlin, Germany.

Aron Halpern & Schmuel Lipman

They have been close friends since their liberation from
Auschwitz. They have stayed close throughout their lives,
and still see each other daily in the synagogue they have
founded together in Florida. They are both from Krakow,
Poland.

Henry Coleman

He has been entertaining the filmmakers with stories for
more than 10 years. He has been spending his winters in
Florida since he closed his business in New York City. He is
originally from Rypin, Poland.

Rabbi Judah Treger

Rabbi Treger is the Dean and spiritual leader of the Talmudic
Academy in Wilrijk, Belgium. He is a world class Talmud
scholar and son in law of the famed Rabbi Shlomo Zalman
Auerbach Ztz'l. He has students all over the world. Rabbi
Treger is originally from Bnei Brak, formerly in Palestine and
today in Israel.

David Mikel

A successful diamond dealer, David emerged after the war as
an outstanding member of his Chasidic community and is
proud to say he has grandchildren that follow in the tradition
of his parents. He is originally from Krakow, Poland.

Joseph Glikman

Scion of a great Chasidic family, Joseph has made his home
and impact in New York City. He was very grateful for the
opportunity to tell his story because he feared it would have
no remembrance. He is originally from Checiny, Poland.

Joseph Friedenson

He has been publishing Dos Yiddishe Vort magazine since
1953. It is the mouthpiece for a generation of Holocaust
survivors determined to regenerate ultra-Orthodoxy in the
wake of the near-destruction of European Jewry. This is a
continuation of his father's work as a publisher of a
respected journal called Bais Yaakov before the world war.
Joseph is originally from Lodz, Poland.

Heine Hendler

He spends his time writing Talmudic novellas at his home in
Toronto, Canada. His books are read in the most scholarly
circles. He and his brothers have been mainstays of the
Toronto Jewish community since the 1950's. He is originally
from Leipzig, Germany.

Israel Cohen

He has been active in the Toronto Jewish community since
the 1950's. A devoted hassid of the Gerrer Rabbi, he has
split his time between being a teacher, Baal Koreh who reads
from the Torah scroll in the synagogue, and real estate agent.
He is originally from Lodz, Poland.

Judith Rubinstein

She lives in Toronto, Canada. A proud mother of two, she
has always devoted herself to her family. She is originally
from Budapest, Hungary.

Bill Pakula

He was a successful businessman in Indianapolis before his
retirement in Miami where he remains close with his beautiful
family. He is originally from Chernivitsi, Ukraine.

Trailer

LIFE IS STRANGE, a documentary by Isaac Hertz. Picture courtesy Lookback Productions. All rights reserved.

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